


No Greater Pain

by Corneliagirl101



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 16:45:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16747747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corneliagirl101/pseuds/Corneliagirl101
Summary: Laney Stevens was a small town girl with small town dreams. Content, she didn't want to leave her home and life to begin the next phase that faces all people post-highschool: the adulting faze. She liked her small town life, her small town job and her small town future.But life isn't meant to be lived with youth boxed in; Kai Matthews knew that. He lived it everyday. Stealing every bit of value the days had to offer and ready to push for more.So he couldn't resist trying to release Laney from the chains of her own making.The girl next door had more to gain from life than what she took from it. He made sure she saw that. The problem is, the bigger the rise the harder the fall. Can someone just spreading their wings handle when the fall is shattering?





	No Greater Pain

Do you see that zombie-like, sobbing mass of hysteria on the bed? The one with old eye liner clinging to her eyes - smudged and unforgiving - and her hair clogged with grease in a messy bun? Do you see a person sporting a shirt three sizes too big and pajama bottoms that have seen more than a day - more than a few days - use? The sight of that poor figure screams "life crisis happened here". And it had. But nobody likes to wear their shame. That sad, sorry looking soul was no different than anyone else. She didn't want to wither away in her room; a mass of shame, regret, sadness and less-than-hygienic smells. She had bigger dreams than that. 

I knew that better than anyone. Because that figure was me.

I’m Laney Stevens. Well, Alanna Stevens. But nobody calls me that.

I'm not usually this bad. I'm quiet, and a bit of a homebody, but this? This is a whole new level of pathetic. And gross. Oh so gross. I’ve been known to spend some time at home – a lot of time and be a bit of a (total) social recluse but with this, I’ve reached a whole new level.

Usually, I'm groomed, clean, and dressed in a lot better than a three day old shirt that smells like salt from my own tears and B-O from my aforementioned lack of grooming. I admit, when inside, dressed usually means pajama bottoms and a clean shirt but hey, I think that's true for a lot of people. Comfort – not classy – is my usual thing. Why bother dirtying clothes when pajamas are much better. And it’s your house – who are you dressing up for? Hmm?

My apartment is in an equally bad, neglected state. Yes, the one I'm currently hiding out in. The blinds are hung and sealed, dishes litter the counter, and empty food containers clog my over filled recycle box. I haven't cooked in weeks. I haven't cleaned in weeks. And it's a pigsty. An empty, lonely, disgusting pigsty. I’ve neglected the apartment in the same way I’ve neglected myself these past few, painful weeks and it bares the evidence vividly.

It doesn't usually look like this. It's usually an apartment. A real one. The dishes are clean and packed away, the sun peers in from my open windows, my books are placed in neatly in my over cramped shelves. The décor is modern; especially nice considering it's near campus property. The walls are soft neutrals, the floor is rolling mahogany, and the space is alive. I'm not a neat freak or anything – I can be messy - but it’s clean and liveable most of the time. But now? It looks like life threw up in my apartment – all over. Twice. And I'm too lazy, heartbroken, and blue to give two damns.

What you're seeing right now is me Post-Kaipocalypse.

Dramatic, I know. But fitting. Really, really fitting.

A little about me. My name is Alanna "Laney" Marianne Stevens. I'm twenty-four years old. I grew up in a small town - and I showed it. I liked my small town; cities made me uncomfortable, large crowds gave me anxiety and my dreams were as small as the town I had lived in. I was slightly odd with a wide array of obsessions: japanase anime, books, video games, animals, killer whales, you know, the usual stuff. I was a hopeless romantic locked in a scared, pessimistic body that waved the "I don't need no man" flag while also being deeply, head over heels in love with book men that involved full on swoons.

I had a weird obsession with very weird names. Like, I was never allowed to name things that were important because people were so afraid of what I would name said important thing. But hey, aren't you a little sick of knowing ten pets named fluffy and three people name Stephanie?

Just me then.

But that shit is boring.

I make no apologies for my odd yet firm stance against furthering the instances of meeting another damn pet named fluffy. Or having to separate the girls I grew up with by the first initial of their last name because yelling "Steph" made several heads turn.

Otherwise, I was fairly normal. I was tall - large ass, curves in both the right and wrong places. I was heavier than I liked but not fat. Just... chunky. Chunky good (I had a very full ass and I liked it) and chunky bad (I had large love handles and thick thighs and I didn't like it). I had long, ass-length brunette hair tinted with caramel and bluer-than-blue eyes I liked to draw attention to. My face was soft, my forehead slightly too large but I had a great set of brows. I never plucked those bad boys. Never had too. Which is good, because when Alison came at me with tweezers to touch them up during a makeover it didn't go over well. Needless to say, I was lucky I didn't have a natural uni brow because my brows weren't going to be anywhere near those devilish little tools anytime soon.

My eyes were pretty, at least that was what my mother always told me. "My little Laney and her pretty blues" was heard many a time during my youth. And they were blue - a deep, dark blue with little flecks of brown and navy through them. I liked my eyes - I was blessed with two that were my favourite colour and worked pretty well. I dedicated more time to my eyes than anything else. Blue eye shadow, black coal eye liner, and mascara were my attempts to draw attention to the one aspect of my face I liked.

My eyes.

If people were looking at my eyes, they wouldn't be looking to deeply at my face. Which, considering the less than perfect skin and dusting of scars from years of childhood punishment in the form of acne, I appreciated.  
And quite honestly, it also showed off the extent of my make-up skills. Contour was a foreign language I didn't understand let alone use. You get my drift.

To put it simple, I was simple. I was raised by a single mother who came from a big family. Things were good sometimes and they were hard sometimes.

I was an odd child; emotional yet reserved, loud yet quiet, hyper yet calm. I was full of contradictions and struggled to make friends.

At first.

I found my ride or dies, don't you worry.

But while I waded through the shit before I got there, I was a lonely child who turned to books, movies and shows when my Mom and family couldn't keep me entertained.

And my cat. Dear lord, I love my cat. Her name was Pepper - and she was the bees knees.

But more on her later.

I was a small town girl, as I said who had a difficult road to finding good friends and good times. But I found them. Eventually. And some even found me.

My first ride or die was found in swim class. Her name is Miya. My second in Kindgarten. My third? Well she found me and didn't take no for an answer. The third brought along the fourth, fifth and sixth. And soon after, I never was alone again.

That was true until the part of growing up where we are all alone in some way or another. The part of life where we are stripped of security, asked to answer the big questions and choose a path in life and charge in blind. That part of life I speak of? It's call post-secondary education. College. University. Sometimes known simply as "adulting".

That one-way street in life makes us all shed our comfort zone, make big decisions and charge ahead on our own. And quite honestly, I was scared shitless to do it. No friends minutes away. No Pepper in my bed at night. No people to push me when all I wanted to do was run away from everything that was new or scary.

Truth be told, although I was strong, I was a follower. I charged ahead behind the strong backs of good friends and when I stumbled, strong hands pushed me forward. I blame the lack of both - along with my own stunted choices in life, for college being so overwhelming for me.  
For that's where this all begins isn't it?

No more high school. No more friends and family you've known since you were little holding your hand, pulling you forward and pushing you when you needed it. No teachers harassing you every second to get your shit together. No sir. College stripped that away. You were thrown in a new environment, you got what you put in out of every day you were there and it was sink or swim as all those small town, good old time comforts are gone.  
It's just you. And what you make of a new path.

And sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can stumble along the way.

I sure as hell did.

Before we go _there,_ here's something to ponder.

Have you ever noticed how the people that fall into the deepest pits of love are those that use to scoff at it? It's kind of funny in away. You know the types. The one's that sit there thinking The Notebook is silly, over-rated, and horribly corny and aren't afraid to share during girls nights. The one's who get shifty eyed during public displays of affection. The one's who almost have signs on then that say "romance stay away!". I was one of those once. I didn't understand why people needed a boyfriend - what was good about all that nonsense? I could barely handle my own shit let alone managing someone else's shit on top of my own. I lived my life like I would lone ranger it until I was old and gray - the only romance I allowed was in the form of some well written, semi-smutty books. And I'll tell you, as pathetic as some people thought I was when I was one of those, I was a heck of a lot happier when I thought way.

But that's because I didn't know what I was missing.

And when you don't know what you're missing, it's hard to think it has anything to offer you. But sometimes - well, a lot of the times it's because you see something that makes you scared of that. Maybe you were around some girls who lost themselves in boyfriends.

You know the ones. The girls who become so wrapped up in their guys they can't tell their ass from their elbow when they get dumped and tossed away for the next sweet thing that comes along? The girls that let a boy tell them what to wear and where to go. The girls who skip girls nights more with every month, left with nothing but broken friendships in the end because they couldn't balance friends and a boyfriend in the same life. That shit scares you. I watched people around me go through it all. Girlfriends cheated on, boys who tried to control them, boys who texted "whats up" ten times a day like you needed to hear from them every second or you would fall apart. From the outside looking it, it's damn scary to watch relationships sometimes. And that fear is enough to keep many away from even trying; too scared to leap and too comfortable with what they know, some just don't try.

But eventually, even the pessimistic ones among us venture out of our shells and try romance on for size. Even pessimists eventually wonder what romance is – Is it the endless beauty of the rainbows and the unicorn tales of our childhoods? Is it the sizzling, panty-melting passion of our lady-smut? Is it a slow burn, a give and take? Is it riding a roller-coaster through life with a compadre? Is it sitting on the couch in the arms of another, content with the simplest things? Is it having sore feet and having someone willing to rub the ache away? Everyone wonders and to everyone, perhaps love is very different. So eventually even the worst of us pessimists venture out into the world: to discover, to experience, to change and to discover our own meaning of love.

I'm pretty sure there was something wrong with me back then, even if I was happy. I was so pessimistic, so closed off to the new things the world had to offer: life, romance, careers, new places. I let it scare me. You know, if I could I'd go back and kick my own ass and give myself one of those open-your-eyes-to-the-world-around-you lectures when I was younger. I wasted a lot of years being scared of change. I was scared of a lot of things: change, love, loss. I let that fear rule me and hold me back far too long.

Dwelling on what if's is my least favourite personality trait. If I could, I would demand an exchange from whoever it was that crafted me.

Because now I've had everything go wrong. I've had the person and lost him. I've had the perfect life and lost it. I've had more pain swallow me up than I thought I could ever deal with; and survived. Barely. I look like hell, the war wounds cling to me and as I’ve admitted  I've succumbed to limbo, but I did survive.

Remember that mass of pathetic I told you about? Me? Well that's the state I'm in. It's nothing to be proud of. I haven't been out of this house in two weeks. I barely leave the comfort of my room if I'm being honest. The ghosts that linger inside the walls, in the halls, in the kitchen, in the eyes of people waiting for me to breathe again are too much. So I linger and avoid and cling to wallowing in limbo to avoid dealing with that a little longer. I may have changed, but I was still a runner. A hider. But, and this is a big but, I'm still here. Everything went wrong and I'm still kickin'. I was shattered, but I wasn’t broken. I was wounded, but alive. I had lived and loved and lost myself but I would find myself again. I was sure of it. Things just took… time.

Don't look at me like that. I'm not that pathetic. It's a rough patch. You've had one. Don't lie. It wasn't pretty either so lay off the judgmental eye roll.

Book's litter my room. They've tumbled from the shelves. Taken over the desk, the chair, the bed; everywhere. That's because all I've done in two weeks is read, relieve myself, and eat a bite here and there. I could go to therapy but books are so much better. A therapist is one point of view; books are thousands. And yes, they aren't about you, but it doesn't mean the book doesn't hold wisdom for you. And it's not always about wisdom, sometimes, it's a break. From your life, from your problems. Books hold the adventures you can't have, the places you can't go; so when I can't stand my life, I live through books. And sometimes, books just make you forget your own shit. The sadder they are, the better they work. You don't have time to feel sorry for yourself when your two-hundred pages and one tissue box deep into a sad, sad book. Pathetic, maybe, but that's how I deal with things. And you know what? It usually works. But this time I don't think The Infernal Devices or Making Faces can save me. I have to save myself.

Don't ask me how. I don't know. I'm getting there though - I can feel the irritation and anger beginning to eat away the pain and the sadness. I am - was - am - a strong and independent woman. And no man was going to bulldoze me. No loss, no matter how terrible, would cripple me. Not... permanently anyway. So don't think I'm some washed up little cry baby just yet.

Because I’m not. I’m battered and tired and sore but my pain demands to be felt. As all pain demands to be felt. And all pain demands respect.

A woman told me something that haunted me once, her words and sentiment hide in the corners of my brain I visit only in times of loss and tragedy. A friend has lost a baby; a miscarriage three months into a happy and planned pregnancy and it devastated her. It devastated her in a way that squeezed your heart to see such sadness cling to a person. A friend, if you could call her that, had spoken to me in confidence about the loss. She had said she was sad for their loss, but she needed to think about how much worse it was lose a child that was here: a child that had been birthed, whose smile you had seen, whose life you were shaping. That she should think about that type of loss and move on, as she was only three months. And she could try again. I remember the ice that went through my veins at her words, pain is pain; it isn’t to be measured or compared, it isn’t a competition. A couple in New York losing their three-year-old doesn’t change the baby bleeding out of my friend, only a peanut whose existence was so fresh and new to the world they hadn’t even seen it yet. No pain is eclipsed by anything else, tragedy is tragedy, loss is loss and the minute we start trying to measure it, we taint ourselves to the emotion of the world. We become a little less human; a little less caring. Her words burned me because even before I had tasted either pain, I knew how wrong she was. I knew how awful it was to say such things and to measure pain, like there were scales to be balanced and compared.

But now? I knew the pain she had spoken to flippantly of – I knew the pain of losing a child I had birthed, whose smile I loved, whose little fingers I’d held. I knew the pain of losing a child I had loved, feared, and cherished. A child who grew from a mistake to a vessel of excitement, a child who grew from a peanut inside of me to a little human with ten fingers and ten toes whose little laugh brightened my world. A child who looked at me with her father’s eyes and shattered me to pieces when she forever closed them.

And let me tell you something, I didn’t think my pain was any greater than my friends. We had lost children: I had held mine and hers bled out of her. I had tasted the dream and she had brushed her fingers on its surface. The cause was different, but the pain was pain. Mine pain was no greater than hers, it just was. It demands respect, it demands time and it demands to be felt. And at this moment, I sure as fuck was feeling mine.


End file.
